


long overdue

by lizardlesbian



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, discussion of sexuality, set in 358/2 days, specifically gay-lesbian friendship because I'm all for that good stuff, the pairing is not the main focus really this is a fic about friendship, which I still haven't finished playing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-08 23:51:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17990879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardlesbian/pseuds/lizardlesbian
Summary: “He never thought there were people who took his fake crush for Kairi for the real thing, and he’s sotiredof pretending, especially now, when he’s sacrificing so much of himself in hope to bring Sora back. So, he stops.”AKA: how to impulsively come out to your boss and somehow not come to regret it.





	long overdue

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this instead of finishing writing my final thesis to get my degree. yeehaw. don't be me.

He doesn’t need the ability to see to know DiZ has been scrutinizing him ever since he came back from his last encounter with the Organization, when he found him asleep on the floor of Naminé’s room. It’s an itch under his skin that has been bothering him more and more the longer the older man goes without saying anything  about it.

They are on the lookout now that the Organization knows some “imposter” is going around pretending to be one of theirs, and that he can easily shoot down their members. The girl he had faced had barely been a challenge, true, but seeing that weird mixture of Kairi and Sora’s traits in her face and hearing her anguished screams after he left her there had left him reeling still several days afterwards, second guessing his actions, her existence, how it managed to come to this. Back in the mansion, his body had just happened to find the way to Naminé’s room instead of his own, in search of a familiar face and an ear willing to listen, he guesses. It has been happening for a while by now: at first, they talked to each other because there was no one else there, and they needed a way to fill the void and the loneliness. Then, as the weeks passed, occasional small talk (that Riku was terrible at) and conversations about their mission (that Naminé hated doing), turned into Riku telling her about the outside and Naminé telling him about her powers and drawings, and now he knew that whenever he came back, she would be there

DiZ doesn’t approve of him interacting so often with her and Riku knows he doesn’t, but he doesn’t usually comment on it. His views on Nobodies have never touched Riku, and he knows they need Naminé’s powers if they want Sora back.

He must be the one to start this conversation or it just won’t happen. Were the King here, he could mediate between the two of them, smooth things over, but Mickey is just as busy these days and not everyone can have the patience to understand silences, Riku least of all. He hates that it has to be this way, because much as he may respect the man, DiZ too often acts as if he’s timeless. He’s a “there’s a time to act and a time to talk” kind of person, something that comes with the age, but not something Riku can understand or get behind. In a matter of hours, he will have to go back outside, searching and fighting both himself and his enemies once more. Time seems to be always slipping from his fingers faster than he can chase after it, and the last thing he need to worry about is this unknown matter left pending to talk about only once he will come back. If  he comes back.

Naminé understands, being closer to his age and sharing the same anxieties as him. The idea that Sora may sleep even longer than he has already plagues all of them equally, but whereas DiZ makes plans about it, Rikus and Naminé feel trapped by it, and it’s why they always say what they need to say to each other, when there’s the time to do so.

“Something wrong?”, it’s what he chooses to start with, in what he hopes is a neutral tone.

DiZ shakes his head. More silence. This doesn’t promise a good conversation nor an easy one, and he’s already wishing he could be over with it.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you and Naminé have gotten quite close, during these last visits of yours.”

His voice is flat as always, yet Riku can still perceive a hint of accusation in there. He’s glad for the blindfold, because he knows that he would have otherwise rolled his eyes at him and gotten yet another comment about how rude he was to elders.

“We have a common goal and she’s the only person I can interact with, aside from you and the King. Are you saying I should keep myself away from her, too?”

“Not quite. It’s no business of mine what you do in your free time, as long as you follow the path you’ve chosen for yourself.” DiZ replies. Yet again, another typical answer. It just meant he was preparing what came afterwards. Riku expected a speech on how friendship with Nobodies was impossible, or something on that same line. He’s not quite ready for what DiZ says next.

“I wanted to merely suggest not to get too attached to her. She’s a Nobody, after all, and a dangerous one on top of it. She has no real love to offer to you, but a fictitious echo of what her original self had. When she disappears, she will only leave you yearning for the girl she once was.”

Something in Riku’s chest stops, making him feel both hot and cold at the same time, and like all his limbs have turned to lead. He thinks Riku is falling in love with Naminé. Riku.  He wishes he could have a laugh about the absurdity of it all, instead he just feels completely estranged from the conversation.

He’s grown accustomed to his many mistakes coming to haunt him in these months working for DiZ, he counts the reason why he deserves this before going to sleep at night: this unending loneliness, this desperation, this stench that plagues his skin, flesh and bones. But he never allows himself to indulge in thinking about the ever–widening gap between himself and the home he had once wanted to run away from, and that he now missed like one misses a limb. He doesn’t reflect on how the last time he saw Kairi she had been unconscious and on the verge of disappearing, so cold and fragile in his arms as he took her away from her only hope of safety, and how much he misses her wit and laughter.

He never thinks about Sora. He can’t stop himself from going to see him sometimes, his pod cool glass against his forehead, blindfold secured so he doesn’t even have the possibility to slip, but his thoughts never indulge too long on him. Sometimes, him and Naminé will sit by it and he will hear her  talk about Sora, will listen to her own mistakes and regrets, and it’s cathartic because while he doesn’t know how to forgive himself and probably never will be able to, he can offer some peace of mind to Naminé as she overworks herself into exhaustion trying to fix Sora’s memories.

He especially doesn’t think about what he had always kept buried inside his heart and hid from everybody, even from himself. His supposed “feelings” for Kairi had always been a comfortable lie, an excuse to antagonize Sora and make Kairi giggle at him while also hiding a huge part of himself. Growing up he used to think of it as his “shameful” side, disgusted in how fast his heart beat and in the jealousy that too often nagged at him. Now, it all just felt empty. An old, useless lie, a part of his self–repressed for too long, that allowed Maleficent first and Ansem after her to play with him as they pleased, manipulating him, controlling him.

He never thought there were people who took his fake crush for Kairi for the real thing, and he’s so _tired_ of pretending, especially now, when he’s sacrificing so much of himself in hope to bring Sora back.

So, he stops.

“There’s no need to worry, I never– I never. For her. I was never like that.” He stutters out, He feels pretty pathetic about the way his voice is trembling. He’s unable to control the torrent of words that come from his mouth, it’s like he’s in autopilot. “Naminé is a– a friend, but I was never into girls anyway, so there’s no risk.”

When he closes his mouth it the weight of everything he just said comes crushing down on him, and he’s horrified with himself. He doesn’t even allow DiZ to reply to his confession, it feels too much all at once and he needs out . He mutters a quick “excuse me”, and strides outside, leaving what he assumes is a confused DiZ behind him. He can’t hear his own steps over the sound of his heartbeat drumming in his ears, nor does he know where he’s going. He just knows he has to get away from all of it.

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him to make him act so impulsively. He had never said it out loud before. Even to himself, it had taken many years of agonizing over it to surrender to the idea that he may like guys. It had been his worst secret and the one he had been the most afraid about others finding out. He never confided in his most important friends or his family about it, he didn’t even think of telling Mickey, who already knew the worst of him and was always ready to support him and offer him words of comfort. Instead, he had gone and told fucking DiZ of all people, an unfamiliar adult man who was sort of his boss, about the fact that he was gay. It made him feel sick in the stomach with something  he couldn’t quite place.

He realizes where his feet have taken him in his panicked stroll only once he slams a door shut behind himself and hears a familiar surprised noise, together with the quiet rustle of a notebook being shut close.

“Riku? Riku, is everything okay?” Naminé’s voice is so distressed as she rushes to meet him, and he can’t stand it. He doesn’t deserve it and he should let her work, she’s so busy, but his heart is still too loud, and he feels like there’s not enough air, and he needs to ask now.

“Did you know?” He’s out of breath, not even sure he’s speaking for real or just letting out indiscernible sounds as he gasps for air.

“Know what? Did something happen, you look–”

“Did. You. _Know_? ” He asks again, with a little more insistence and way too loud for this tiny white room and its oppressive silence. “Did you know that I— That I was in—”

There are some ways that sentence could go. “That I was in love with Sora” is the most obvious option, “that I was into guys”, is the alternative, but none of them manage to come out of his mouth. Pathetic. He can admit it freely to a virtual stranger, but not to someone he considers a friend. He hasn’t grown a bit in all this time. He’s still the same coward that opened the Door to Darkness out of a petty grudge.

Her hand finds his own, and only now he realizes how hard he had been gripping his arm in search of a way to calm himself down. Even with the coat covering his skin, he’s gonna have significative bruises there in a couple hours. She disentangles his fingers from the fabric and takes his hand in her own squeezing it gently, giving him a handhold to stop this crushing fall.

“Sit down and breathe with me.” She says, simply, and for a moment she seems so much like her that for a second, Riku is afraid he’s going to crumple on the floor and scream and cry like a child about about how homesick he is. Instead, he allows her to guide him on the ground, sitting in front of her as he slowly regains control of his breathing, his hands stop trembling, and he doesn’t feel like the world is crushing on him as much anymore. He’s never had an episode so bad before, and now that it’s over, he’s left with only shame and regret. That has been a pathetic display for sure, and he has no idea how he’s going to face DiZ later.

“I’m sorry,” he still says, because he doesn’t like weighing her down with his problems. She hums, and he doesn’t see it, but he knows she’s giving a reassuring smiling.

“It’s not a problem. We are after the same thing, remember? So the same way you help me, it’s also part of my job to help you” And it’s similar to something he Kairi once told him, years before, about how best friends are always there for each other and if Kairi can come crying to Riku about people being mean to her, then Riku can do the same, but it’s different enough and it feels way more comfortable this way. Naminé and Kairi may be one and the same in many things, but they’re also two separate identities, and he refuses to assimilate the two of them into one.

They sit in comfortable silence for a moment, Naminé’s hand still holding his own, her thumb smoothing the rough skin of his knuckles as he relearns how to breath. He has always avoided being touched by others, even by people close to him, before just like now. He does make an exception for her thought, but it’s because she needs it way more than Riku does. Contact proves you’re alive and there, and she’s told him before that touching him helps her remember that she’s here and now, and not just some lost fragment of a girl that she’s never personally met but knows everything about. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it helped him too: it helped him stay grounded, remember that he’s still in his body and hasn’t been captured by the darkness yet.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She starts, but Riku stops her immediately.

“It’s nothing, I was just talking to DiZ and I ended up saying too much.” That’s a pretty good summary of it. He doesn’t need to indulge in this specific slip–up of his for longer than necessary, or ever again, really.

She seems unconvinced and not really ready to let it go. Riku doesn’t blame her, considering he did barge in her room, have a violent panic attack about coming out to his sort–of boss, sort–of adult figure of reference at the moment, and then insist everything was fine all in the span of ten minutes.

“I’m not sure I understood what you were trying to say before, but… it has to do with your feelings for Sora, doesn’t it?”

He’s not really surprised that she managed to make something out of the garbled mess of words that came out of his mouth during a panic attack. He nods. There’s no point in pretending otherwise: the cat is out of the bag, as one would say. He may have troubles saying it out loud to the right people, but it doesn’t mean he’s gonna hide it forever.

“I do have an answer for you, if you want to hear it.”

He’s not sure, truth to be told. It’s something he had always been scared of for as long as he remembers, and he’s not really sure if he wants to know if it’s visible , whatever the hell it means.

Naminé respects his silence, and it’s not until he shakily nods that she continues speaking

“I don’t know if you want to know about me or my other me, but Kairi… I think she knew. She figured you weren’t ready to tell others, so she never pressed, but she had always wanted to tell you to stop torturing yourself over it.”

Riku realizes as Naminé says this that on some level, he probably already knew. There had been times when it was just the two of them on that beach, in which he had seen Kairi ready herself to say something important, but once she looked at him in the eyes, she would smile and change topic instead. He wishes he could have had the courage to tell her then, or that she could have said something: they probably wouldn’t be here now, in this mess that seemed impossible to fix. But then again, in that case Naminé wouldn’t be here comforting him now, and it feels wrong to think about possibilities in which Naminé never existed and he never got to live this moment, just to make himself feel better thinking of an alternative universe in which he didn’t ruin everything.

“To be honest, she thought you were never as subtle about it as you thought you were.” She adds, and it stings a little to hear but still forces a short laugh out of him. When he was eight, once Sora kissed him on the cheek to thank him for something he did that he can’t quite remember now. What he remembers is that he spent the rest of the day too overwhelmed to speak to the other boy, red faced to the point that his mother had kept him from going to school the following day, afraid he had caught something. He has no trouble picturing clever little Kairi putting two plus two together without any difficulty, even before he himself knew. Naminé allows herself a small giggle too, and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was recalling the exact same memory as him.

She stops a moment to breathe, like she’s trying to gather her thought in order to continue. Talking about this seems to be as hard for her as it is for Riku and isn’t that something curious.

“I... know too.” Her voice is soft, but steady. “I have known since I first saw you. I don’t know if it was Kairi’s memories that suggested me, or what I saw of you in Sora’s memories, or your face when we first met, and you saw him in that thing, but I immediately knew. I knew you loved him. At first, I thought it was because… because I loved him too. The feelings weren’t mine, not really, but I yearned for him anyway, and it hurt me so much when he decided to forget me that it felt real . But when I was brought here, and I started working on fixing his memories, spending time with you, I realized my feelings for him may have been just a reflection of the affection Kairi had for him. I was so lonely I just wanted to feel _something_ for someone, and he was there. Had it not been him, I may have felt the same way about you.”

“Now, I think I know that you love him because I, too—”

She stops suddenly, like she let something slip by that was never meant to come out. He can feel hear freeze. Her hand leaves his own and she retracts into herself, the warmth and calm of the moment broken.

“What? What is it?” He chases after her blindly, quite literally. The silence is deafening, to the point in which he can hear her breath trembling as it comes out of her mouth. When after a few tries his hand finds hers again, she grasps it, hard.

He waits, in the end. He waits for whatever it is that holds her so tight to pass, for Naminé to be able to continue that sentence, and after what feels like years, she does.

“I think I’m the same as you.” She admits. Her voice is feeble, like she’s telling a terrible secret, and Riku _understands_ , but it doesn’t stop the evident surprise from showing on his face. Even with his too long hair and the blindfold, she notices it, and her already shaking tone drops even more, dripping with uncertainty. “I think, I… I am not sure. I’ve been thinking about it and it makes sense , but it’s hard to tell when all my life is…” She gestures the room around herself. Her painting tools, the white walls she’s trapped inside.

“I get it.” He replies, because he does, more than anyone else probably. He knows exactly how she feels, because all that time, the Destiny Islands had felt exactly the same. Riku has often wished he had met someone else just like him, but none of them had been where he lived, and he had been so scared  to ask adults about it, he had never done it. And for so long, he had second guessed if he even really liked boys or if it was just Sora, or if what he felt for Sora was something else, or if it was just a lie because he felt lonely and the girls only liked him because he was “pretty”. He can’t even imagine what it’s like for Naminé, whose existence is more recent than him and has been entirely determined by other people using her on someone else like she’s a tool.

Naminé sighs. Her grip is lax now, like she’s exhausted, but she doesn’t let him go.

“I just… don’t know. How are you supposed to know if you like girls, if you never met one your age in your existence? If the only woman you’ve ever met was using you and being really mean about it?” Her voice trembles just like his own had what felt like hours ago. He can tell she’s trying her hardest not to cry. “How do I know what I feel is not just an echo of what Kairi doesn’t know she feels? How can I know if this is real?”

She’s terrified, he can tell. He wonders how long she has kept this hidden (just like him), or how long she has been kept awake, rethinking her life – in her case, particularly, a life that wasn’t her own, and yet it was – and wondering if there had been signs, why hadn’t she noticed before, and was this just a phase of growing up, after all?

Riku remembers being small, much smaller than he is now, and absolutely terrified of the way he loved. He had been so lost back then, so now he tells her what he wished someone had told him back then, when he had been exactly the same as Naminé is right now. He squeezes her hand, capturing her attention, and turns to her, wishing he could face her as he says this. In a move that is just as stupid and impulsive as his every action in this day has been, he pushes his blindfold up a sliver, and his eyes, unaccustomed with light, meet Naminé’s own, full of tears, but still holding on strong.

“You just know. There’s no big reveal it, it’s just... something you know, deep inside you. And you know it’s real, because it’s from you. Even if this is something that Kairi still doesn’t know about herself, you still discovered it on your own, and you are the one to feel it. It belongs to you, and only you.”

Her eyes widen, and though the tears begin flowing on her face freely, her smile is so happy and free  it hits him hard in the chest. He smiles as well, and he hasn’t smiled in so long he forgot he was even able to do it.

“Thank you.” She sobs, “ _Thank you_ ” , she repeats again. He pushes down the blindfold returning to his world of darkness, and he wonders why  she’s thanking him when he didn’t really do anything but tell her something she would have understood on her own eventually, while he’s the one who has been on the receiving end of her care this whole time. In some way he feels like she’s crying tears of relief for the both of them: Riku forgot how to time ago, and while he doesn’t miss it, he wishes he had a way to regulate emotions that isn’t to destroy everything around him until he’s left to piece together the charred remains on his own.

Before his dark thoughts can take this moment away from him, all of the sudden, her arms wind up around his neck and she pushes her face against his shoulder, and even though Riku has no idea how to respond to the situation, he doesn’t try to run away from it, but allows himself to relax in her hug. After too much thought about it, he settles on awkwardly patting her back, cringing to himself about how he seems to be unable to do _anything_ right for her, but she giggles and relaxes against him anyway, and he keeps going on until her chest stops hiccupping and her breathing smooths over. Then it’s just them, half holding onto each other and tired like they just went through the hell that was Castle Oblivion again, together this time.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there, ignoring their many duties in order to bask in this small corner of comfort they carved for themselves just a little longer, nor when they fall asleep or for how long, but for once, he doesn’t mind. He’s allowed to torture himself over what he is for so long, hiding it from everybody, that now that it’s out in the open he feels lightheaded. It’s a festering wound that has finally been cauterized and is finally allowed to heal in peace. He has forgot what feeling light and at peace felt like, and even if it’s just on such a small thing like his sexuality, it still feels like a victory.

He wonders if it’s the same for Naminé. He hopes it is. Even after she has to go back to Kairi and lose this individuality she suffers from so much but still wishes to keep, she will have this piece of herself to hold onto.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to catch up with all of Kingdom Hearts at age 22, and I still haven't finished playing 358/2 days, but I already know the ending of KH3 thank to my girlfriend, and I love this unlikely friendship a whole lot. Pure genuine gay-lesbian solidarity.  
> This fic isn't pulled out of nowhere, but it's the real depiction on how I came out to anybody in my life at age 16/17: out of anger that anyone would still think I was het, and on impulse. Unlike Riku, thought, I didn't have a friend or a support system, so it was a little worse, but not by much. I came to discover recently that impulsively coming out to complete strangers is a common gay experience, and I couldn't help but see myself in Riku's very gay and also very closeted character. I think I'm gonna write more about KH kids and their relationship with sexuality and gender stuff in the future, because it's very cathartic.  
> Find me on tumblr at [antibioware](http://antibioware.tumblr.com/)!


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